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Department of Political and Administrative Studies

Background

The department of Political and Administrative Studies is one of the oldest academic departments in the University of Malawi. It is currently housed within the Faculty of Social Sciences at Chancellor College.

Historically, the department of Political and Administrative Studies was established as the Institute of Public Administration (IPA) in 1962. It was established to train civil servants. The IPA became one of the constituent colleges of the University of Malawi when it was founded in 1965, and when the Chancellor College moved to Zomba in 1973, the IPA was restructured and became an academic department called the Department of Public Administration under the Faculty of Law and Public Administration.

Since then, the department has undergone a number of changes.

Streams

The department currently has three streams:

Public Administration

Political Science

Human Resource Management

Public Administration programme

The undergraduate Public Administration programme runs for four years and caters for students who come straight from secondary schools as well as those who join in the first year as mature or non-residential students.

Political Science programme

The Political Science programme runs for four years and also targets first year students who wish to major in political science. The department also offers the Human Resource Management programme, which runs both as a fee-paying full-time programme and a week-end programme.